htaccess wordpress is causing problems with directory security

[MarcNJ]

I'm on a shared hosting provider (that provides me with cPanel), and have recently installed WordPress in my root public_html directory. As a result, my .htaccess has been modified with the following code:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress


This seems to have broken directory security, as I have a directory that I secured using the "Password Protect Directories" options in cPanel. It seems that when you do this, the directory is hidden from view and only accessible if typed directly...and this is causing the above entries in htaccess to not see that directory (I think) and therefore pass me on to WordPress for a 404 error. Any way to fix this? (I might be wrong on my assumption above, but I am definitely sure that if I un-password protect the directory, I can access it, and when I re-password protect it, I can't access it anymore and get a WordPress 404 error). Thanks for any help!!

- Marc